Some additional context on Cambridge Analytica.
I'm guessing Dr. Aleksandr Kogan (who also had his FB account suspended) was Cambridge Analytica (and the Trump campaign's) source of data on individual Facebook profiles:
> Cambridge Analytica used its own database and voter information collected from Facebook and news publishers in its effort to help elect Donald Trump, despite a claim by a top campaign official who has downplayed the company’s role in the election. ... In another case, in the late stages of the November election, Schweickert said the company acquired data on voters who voted early – data it collected from local counties and states – and linked the information to individual Facebook profiles.
I urge everyone to watch this video from Cambridge Analytica about their techniques with big data and psychographic profiling leading up to the 2016 election. Very dystopian, it almost feels like a seminar with a Bond villain. Quote from the video:
> "we were able to form a model to predict the personality of every single adult in the United States of America."
So, I'm far to the left of most people, and I'm no fan of Trump, but I watched that video and I got the sense I usually get from reading about ML/big data, people seem to be selling these as more than they actually are. It almost is intuitive if not, I guess, what most people who study market research already know: you tailor your message to your audience. Even on a personal level, anyone who has navigated real life with real people knows that you have to communicate with people in the way that they will be most receptive. Nowhere are they "planting" ideas in people's heads, nowhere are they brainwashing people, they are merely saying the same message (for example, defend the 2nd ammendment) to people who might already agree in a way that they'll receive it. The big 5 personality traits are an already well known and documented idea, and even without that, in your day-to-day life, you learn what people's personalities are and you tailor how you communicate with them anyway.
The thing that they seem to bring to the table however is the massive amount of personalized data. That is the issue here, because that data can be abused by nefarious actors if it were to fall in the wrong hands. What usually takes a much more personal touch (like going out to voters, talking to them, or if you can't do that, have teams on the ground that talk to voters and tell you before your speech what they care about and why) can be done in mass due to essentially aggregating private data that users "agree to" obliviously or even don't consent to. That is the issue at hand, not like Cambridge somehow warped the people in Wisconsin's brains to mush and made them go to the polls.
Yes, M.L. is always sold on the metaphor and not on the reality -- that's partly because its advocates are really unable to distinguish animal consciousness and cognition from computation.
Machine Learning models are tools for computing specific predictions. They are not thoughts, have no concepts, etc.
The model isnt what it is used for. A model isnt what it describes. The ability of an ML system predict a person's action isn't a reasoning process. A rock rolling down a hill predicts the path of water rolling down a hill. The rock isnt thinking about it.
Describing ML models as if they were cognitive gives people the impression that computers possess the relevant concepts and understanding which is why its seems scary. It's just current through a write to a fancier dial.
Can you please recommend a book or something on these 5 traits and tailoring communication with people based on their personality ? It sounds interesting and something that would probably be especially useful for me.
>> "we were able to form a model to predict the personality of every single adult in the United States of America."
That would be dystopian if it weren't so ridiculous. They can do nothing of the sort- predict the personality of any adult in the USA. At best they might be able to make predictions on a population basis, but anything more precise than that is out of the question. Behaviour prediction on an individual scale is pure, unadulterated fantasy.
This is just typical overselling of a service, by people who can use maths to obfuscate the fact that they 're making it up as they go along, targeted to people who wouldn't understand the maths if a five-year old explained it to them anyway.
Did you watch the video? They claimed real results helping Ted Cruz in the primaries with this sort of hyper-targeted advertising.
The access they have to online data sources would absolutely be enough to start correlating things to build an individual profile. Say you can link someone's FB, Twitter, (HN?!) account posts, likes, shares, to credit card data, maybe even search keywords from shady advertisers, to vehicle registration records, tax records, census data, etc.
Do you really think this profiling is that far-fetched that they need to BS everyone? It doesn't have to be perfect to be many times more effective than untargeted ads...
In fairness, you don’t need to be able to do it for every person if you can target a few hundred thousand across a few critical states. Even with a relatively low success rate in changing minds or encouraging/discouraging turnout you can yield results - 2016 was only decided by ~70k folks in 3 states.
I can do a model of personality using ML/DL anytime as well, it's a piece of cake. How good the model is is another question; I'd be surprised if they were significantly better than random noise given how pathetic "science" of psychology is.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/26/cambridge...
> Cambridge Analytica used its own database and voter information collected from Facebook and news publishers in its effort to help elect Donald Trump, despite a claim by a top campaign official who has downplayed the company’s role in the election. ... In another case, in the late stages of the November election, Schweickert said the company acquired data on voters who voted early – data it collected from local counties and states – and linked the information to individual Facebook profiles.